Canadian terroir: characterization of Riesling wines from the Niagara Peninsula

Abstract

The Niagara Peninsula (Ontario, Canada) is thought to have distinct viticultural areas (‘bench’, ‘plains’, ‘lake’), but the uniqueness of wines from these regions has not been documented. Therefore this research was undertaken to document the nature and magnitude of the terroir differences using 14 commercial Riesling wines from producers who utilized grapes from the ‘Beamsville Bench’ (‘bench’) and the ‘Niagara Plains’ (‘plains’) regions. The sensory characteristics of the wines were profiled using descriptive analysis (DA) coupled with univariate and multivariate statistics. Six trained judges evaluated 10 aroma (pineapple, melon, grapefruit, lemon/lime, apple, peach/apricot, rose/floral, honey, diesel/petrol, mineral/flint), six flavour (pineapple, melon, grapefruit, lemon/lime, peach/apricot, honey), two taste (acidity, sweetness), and three other (alcohol, body, finish) sensory attributes. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance, step-wise discriminant analysis (SDA) and principle component analysis (PCA). Wines from the ‘bench’ had significantly higher grapefruit, pineapple, melon and lemon/lime aromas, more acidity and greater lemon/lime flavour than the ‘plains’ wines. ‘Plains’ wines were more diesel/petrol-like in character. A PCA of the data, using the most relevant sensory descriptors (as determined by SDA), indicated that 68.7% of the variability could be explained in the first two dimensions, with factor one accounting for the lemon/lime, grapefruit, melon and acidity of the wines and factor two representing the mineral/flint character.